No Time to Wave Goodbye by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Jacquelyn Mitchard is treading familiar (and familial) ground in her new book No Time to Wave Goodbye. A sequel to her 1996 debut novel The Deep End of the Ocean, which spent 29 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold three million copies in its first two years of publication, and was chosen as an Oprah’s Book Club pick, No Time to Wave Goodbye re-enters the life of the Cappadora family 22 years after Beth Cappadora’s three-year-old son Ben was abducted.

The first book depicted Ben’s safe recovery, nine years later, from a home in a nearby neighbourhood, but as Mitchard now reminds us, he did not simply slide back into his place in his biological family. The lasting grief caused by the missing decade abraded the family ties, and Ben returned to live with the man he called dad – who had been genuinely shocked to discover that the boy he called Sam was not the real son of his now-deceased wife, whom he met when she was a solo mum to Ben/Sam.

Over the years, Beth and her husband Pat have battled, not always successfully, to come to terms with having to share their son, call him by another name and treat his ‘father’ with kindness at Cappadora gatherings. Evident fractures remain as the sequel opens and Ben, now a husband and new father, embarks on a new journey, as a documentary maker.

The project he has been working on with his ne’er-do-well brother Vincent and opera-singer sister Kerry is premiering in the tight-knit community in which the Cappadoras live. The opening chapters are alive with tension as Beth, who was not told of the documentary’s subject, watches a series of horribly familiar stories.

As a way of making peace with his past and telling the stories of other families like his own, Ben has found a group of families whose children have vanished in mysterious circumstances, apparently taken by strangers.

Beth’s shock is quickly replaced with pride, and as the documentary starts to gain national attention, the family is drawn closer than it has ever been.

The Cappadoras’ collective bliss reaches its peak at a prestigious awards event at which Ben’s film is recognized, but the same night another abduction occurs and lo, the decades-old nightmare resumes.

What follows is a dramatic shift in genre, excising Beth from much of the rest of the story and pitting Ben and Vincent against the elements in an action-thriller jaunt that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find was inspired by the writings of Jon Krakauer or even Lee Child.

The story holds together and ends enthusiastically if somewhat implausibly, but it’s hard to laud a novel that makes quite so many demands on the reader’s suspension of disbelief, from the similarities between the past and present kidnappings to the awards event, the rescue effort and the final revelation.

It’s diverting and suspenseful and ultimately somewhat tiring. The Cappadoras are an appealing family of which many more tales could be told, but they might do well to stay at home and rest for a bit.

2.5 / 5 stars: The kids are all right.  Click here to see more Easy Mix Book Reviews.

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

The action in Anna Quindlen’s elegant, moving new novel Every Last One takes its time coming; fully half the novel is dedicated to the delicate unspooling of the daily life of the Latham family: Mary Beth, her husband Glen, and their three teenage children, Ruby and her younger, fraternal twin brothers, Alex and Max.

The leisurely pace is not accidental. The reader must know the characters, be invested in their lives, to feel the full weight of the crucial event. (When the titular phrase ‘every last one’ is uttered, it is a heart-sinking moment.)

Anna Quindlen parses private life with a skill rivalling that of any contemporary writer; one suspects that skill is born as much from keen observation and long practice as natural talent. A former journalist who took up fiction writing full-time in 1995, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column ‘Public and Private’, and her impressive ‘Last Word’ column graced the final page of Newsweek magazine for nine years until announcing her semi-retirement in 2009.

Additionally, she has written five earlier novels, all bestsellers, including One True Thing, which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination when produced as a feature film in 1998.

Like Mary Beth, Quindlen has three children and a long marriage, and there is an authenticity and lightness to her writing that suggests it is a product of experience as much as invention. (A reporter’s habit that can’t be entirely abandoned, possibly.)

The Lathams live in a close-knit community in which it seems every child has played in every backyard – but not every bond has endured. Mary Beth was once best friends with Deborah, the mother of Ruby’s boyfriend Kiernan, but long-ago events caused an irreparable breach. Kiernan is spending more and more time at the Lathams’, and appears troubled, but Ruby is pulling away, and Mary Beth resists asking questions, having learned that the best way to find out what is going on in the lives of her children is to remain silent and alert.

Meanwhile, Max is sinking into a torpor from which his mother feels powerless to rescue him; he starts to see a therapist, but, with his mood failing to lift, Mary Beth’s anxiety intensifies. Like many mothers, she is the emotional heart of the family, perhaps subconsciously hoping that in fretting over her children, she is helping to protect them.

Quindlen writes ordinary, middle-class family life well. Mary Beth marvels at her daughter’s self-assured quirkiness while reflecting, with a mix of anguish and relief, on Ruby’s recent skirmish with an eating disorder. She yearns for some of Alex’s self-possession to rub off on his withdrawn brother. And she admires the relaxed approach to parenting of her husband, who tells her she is too involved in their children’s inner lives.

It all turns on a dime one evening, following a New Year’s Eve party at the home of Glen and Mary Beth’s close friends. Mary Beth wakes afterwards with a different life. With this, Quindlen poses questions that go to the heart of our existence: how much can one person survive, and when is it worth it to try? Quindlen’s mastery of the navigation of emotion makes the exploration of these questions a rewarding pastime.

3.5 / 5 stars: Sobering and stunning.  Click here to view more Easy Mix book reviews.

Last week’s ‘beer summit’ in Washington, DC was like gold-dust to a TV news editor – America’s mixed-race President sitting down over beers at the White House to sort out a race-based scuffle between a cop and an academic.

Once upon a time, we would heard all about it from the breathless TV reporters on the nightly news and in the next day’s paper, but in 2009 the New York Times’ The Caucus live-blogged the whole thing, while taking questions.

Reader Christopher Gomez wrote in, mid-live-blog, to ask why the Times, bearing in mind that the summit stemmed from comments made by Obama at a press conference at which the main topic was health care, was “expending so many resources, column inches and electrons on such a completely frivolous story?”

Reporter Peter Baker responded, “As for Times resources, if you’re more interested in health care than this, then please check out two stories we had on health care on today’s front page and the third story we had inside about it.” He helpfully included links to the stories but did not, you’ll notice, answer Mr Gomez’s question.

The beer summit was the titillating result of the recent arrest for disorderly conduct of African-American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Massachusetts police, after a confrontation at Gates’ home.

The racial overtones of the event (the arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, is white), coupled with Professor Gates’ status as one of the country’s leading scholars, predictably stirred the interest of national news media. The interest led to an incendiary remark from President Obama at the end of the aforementioned press conference (which to this point had been po-faced and somewhat didactic), when asked his views on the ‘Gates incident’: “ . . . I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say . . . that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”

Obama’s comments drew the ire of law enforcement officials across the US. Shortly thereafter he expressed the wish that the situation could become a “teachable moment”; last Thursday, the President, Vice President Joe Biden, Crowley and Gates sat down for a conversation over each man’s choice of beer.

(Which itself proved problematic – the Wall Street Journal carried a front-page story featuring the laments of American brewers that three of the beers served were made by foreign-owned companies: “Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams, decried “the foreign domination of something so basic and important to our culture as beer.””.)

Reporters couldn’t get close enough to catch what was said, but after the meeting, Gates remarked that he and the police officer had hit it off: “ . . . when he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Gates is a really likable guy.”

What is fascinating about this episode is not that it was covered so extensively; after all, the initial incident was certainly newsworthy, and the aftermath equally so. Is it compelling because race, politics and media are colliding in a way they never have before in the country that still dominates geopolitics and our popular culture – or is it because the line between mainstream news outlets and political bloggers (those who are fair, have good sources and check their facts) is now so blurred we can’t tell the difference, and we’ve stopped caring anyway?

Like, it doesn’t matter where you get your news – this is what you’re going to be reading about today?

Are we living in one giant blogosphere?